Relict
by Bad Mum
Summary: Molly without Arthur. For the "Flying Solo" and "Fluffy Bunny" Challenges at the HP Fanfiction Challenges Forum.
1. I

This was written for two challenges at the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges forum. The first one is the "Flying Solo" Challenge - to write someone on their own who is usually part of a pair or a group. This is Molly without Arthur - "relict" is an old word for "widow".

Part two will be for another challenge at the same forum, and will be up in a day or two.

**Relict**

**I**

She has never been alone in The Burrow before.

No, that's stupid, of course she has. Once Ginny started school, there were hours and hours when she was here alone when Arthur was at work.

What she means is she has never _lived_ in The Burrow alone before. It was bought as a family home, and that is what it has always been. She always knew that someone beside herself would be coming home here.

But now, there won't be. She is the only person who lives here now. Of course, her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be in and out as they always have been. (Probably more than ever now that Arthur is gone because they will want to make sure that she is alright. It would not surprise her to discover that Victoire has drawn up a rota.)

She had no end of a job convincing them all that she was not going to stay with any of them, that she was coming home. She cannot blame them for fussing. She knows that they love her, that they are worried about her on her own, that they want to look after her. But they have lives of their own, and she needs to be here. She needs to find herself, to find her life without Arthur, to discover how to go on on her own.

She has no illusions that it will be easy. They were married for over eighty years, together for four before that. "Alone" is not something she has ever had to face. But she has to learn.

She wanders through the house, hearing voices of children long-since grown, picking up the baby shawl that someone (Amalie probably – that girl always forgets something) left in one of the bedrooms, smiling at photos scattered on shelves and window ledges throughout the house.

She finishes in the kitchen, in front of her clock. Arthur's hand – like Fred's and Percy's – is gone now, wrapped with theirs in tissue paper in the bottom of her jewellery box. She sighs and twists at her wedding ring, her face uncertain.

"It's time to take it down, love." Arthur might be standing just behind her, his voice is so clear.

She knows he is right, and she reaches up to lift the clock from the place on the wall where it has hung since the war ended so long ago. She wraps it carefully in a tablecloth and puts it in a corner out of sight. She will ask Bill to get rid of it next time he visits. He will understand why.

Then she turns back to her empty kitchen. She makes herself a cup of tea and carries it into the living room.

Alone starts now.


	2. II

_This second chapter is for the "Fluffy bunny" challenge at the HP Fanfiction Challenges forum._

**II**

It has been a year. A year of being one instead of half of a pair. A year of "I" instead of "we".

It has been hard, and strange. An unfamiliar landscape that has been hard to navigate. Cooking for one. Making decisions alone – and somehow even the simplest, most trivial decisions are harder now. Sleeping alone, and waking every morning to the sense of something – someone – missing.

They have looked after her of course. As she expected, there has not been a day when one or more of the family has not turned up on her doorstep to check she is okay. They have excuses ("I was on my way home…", "I knew you'd give me a cup of tea and not nag me about Drew…", "Meggie wanted you to taste the cookies she made…"), but she knows why they come, and she cannot blame them.

They worry about her, as she does about them. (Freddie and Anna are working much too hard; Suzanne and Drew are far too young to be quite so serious; Mara and Jay really need to start studying properly if they are going to pass their NEWTs.)

Most of all, and surprisingly, she worries about her own children. It is odd to be the mother of old people, and to worry about them as much as she did when they were children. (Bill's scars are clearly hurting him again; Charlie is miserable since his last injury means he is confined to the house; George is missing Fred more now than he has for years; Ron looks tired; Ginny is too busy fussing about everyone else to take care of herself.)

She misses Fred and Percy every day. And Fabian, Gideon, her parents and Arthur's, Andromeda, Poppy, Apolline … so many people gone before her.

But she does not miss Arthur in the same way. She finds herself talking to him all the time, whatever she is doing. And if his answers are just in her imagination, does it really matter? She talks to him, and he answers, and sometimes it is as if he has never left her. (She tries not to do it when other people are around, but sometimes she forgets. It is just one more reason why the family worry about her.)

But she is tired.

One morning in May, she wakes, and there is something different about the light. It is brighter, more intense, more focused. She can hear voices, but cannot work out where they are coming from.

"Mum! Mum!"

Why is George here?

It isn't George. She turns her head on the pillow and sees Fred grinning at her. Percy is just behind, looking no older than his brother despite the more than fifty years that separated their deaths. She can see her parents too, and her brothers…

Then she sees him. Arthur. Smiling at her as he did on their wedding day, holding out his hand.

She stands and takes his hand.

* * *

_A/N "Fluffy bunny" is code for "kill off your main character". I couldn't leave Molly on her own for too long!_

_For those who've asked about he timing of this story - Molly and Arthur were married at twenty and twenty-one respectively in my universe, and since they were married for over eighty years before Arthur died, they are both well over a hundred. Bill is in his eighties, Ginny in her seventies, even Victoire in her mid-fifties... It is more than fifty years since Voldemort's defeat. Percy died a few years ago, probably of a wizarding illness, and was over seventy._


End file.
